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Julia Gillard campaigns to give Syrian refugees an education

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: The former prime minister Julia Gillard has joined forces with the former UK leader Gordon Brown to campaign for more funding for education for Syrian refugees.

Speaking in London the former prime ministers called for one million Syrian refugee children to be given an education in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Europe correspondent Barbara Miller reports:

BARBARA MILLER: The statistics on Syrian children are sobering.

GORDON BROWN: Here we have a concentration of two million children, growing at a rate of about 5,000 a week, leaving Syria but on the streets, desolate, in huts, hovels, tents, shacks.

BARBARA MILLER: The former British prime minister Gordon Brown says more must be done for the refugee children.

GORDON BROWN: Why are most of them still out of school, on the streets? And why are they vulnerable, as has happened, to child labour, child marriage, and child trafficking, without the world doing enough about it?

JULIA GILLARD: So there is a great deal to do but I do come to this, you know, campaigning with a real spirit of optimism. I think that there is more energy and more momentum now.

BARBARA MILLER: Australia's former prime minister Julia Gillard concedes without political progress education won't help Syrians' job prospects but says that shouldn't be an excuse for inaction.

JULIA GILLARD: Education isn't the solution for every problem, but it's hard to imagine a problem that isn't advantaged by having the benefits that education brings.

BARBARA MILLER: The campaign is hoping to raise $1.1 billion to fund one million Syrian refugees through schooling.

Julia Gillard says she thinks Australians will support it.

JULIA GILLARD: I think many Australians focus a great deal on events in our world, are very charitable minded people, give a lot of money themselves and seek to make a difference.

BARBARA MILLER: The former UK Labour prime minister Gordon Brown says the dangers of not giving displaced Syrian children an education are clear.

GORDON BROWN: We cannot allow these children to become not just a lost generation but a discontented and dispossessed generation, with all the implications that 200 million young people growing up in the Middle East have for the security of that region and the rest of the world.

We have a duty to do something.

BARBARA MILLER: The bleak prospects for any of these children to return to a peaceful Syria were borne out in Geneva overnight after talks ahead of more talks on bringing about an end to the long-running conflict were postponed and the disagreement over who exactly represents the Syrian opposition.

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